Carnival 2011

The regime ended for us with the ancient Roman ‘feast of fools’ on the 17th of February. It was a rainy day, beautiful in its own way, and it did not matter. We had enough to do and celebrate indoors once the dryness ended after we had been in town for our ‘breaking-the-fast’ grande cafés au lait. And for music at one point I tried to play Malcolm Arnold’s Fifth Symphony and managed at best, once I went through every iTune’s option, etc., to hear it in reverse order – purely carnivalesque in the spirit that lurks behind the days at present.

Two days previously we had another visit to Aix-en-Provence to secure room reservations both for the June-July ISSR conference and for the Festival d’Aix. It was another rainy day – at least when we started out from Aups in the morning, but there was sun – part of the time – in Aix. We also went to see Black Swan. I enjoy Natalie Portman. It was entertaining but not a great film.

Amsterdam does not seem like a good situation at present, and I may have to return there to find out exactly what is happening. Ricardo is not informative but has let the people downstairs have the keys to the upper part of the house, and they are taking advantage of that access. Giny, who stays there Wednesday nights, is our one and great salvational asset.

With the return of fine weather in the Provence, and only recently learning that they were even buried here, we drove to our neighbouring town of Moissac-Bellevue and visited the graves of Bill and Roselle Davenport. They were the doyennes of our area here, were brilliant and wonderful characters, helped us enormously and were most enjoyable to know over many, many years. Their internment spots are simple but, when one stands before them, offer an unobstructed sweeping panoramic view toward the mountains in the distance – including Mount Sainte-Victoire. It was a lovely discovery for us.

My thoughts invariably turn at some point these days to the issue of global warming. With the rapid population explosion of humans on this planet it would seem to me at least that climate consequences are inevitable. I am increasingly realizing that those who adamantly deny that global warming is occurring have adopted a ‘faith position’. I should note here that I wish to distinguish these people from those who express the critical view against climate change as ‘unproven’ for capitalistic and profit gain reasons. Nevertheless, while global warming has not been proven finally one way or the other, mine is also a ‘faith position.’ All the same, I think this is crucial. On the one hand, the possible consequences are too catastrophic for us to gamble the chance that we do not need to do something about it. The risk alone is high enough to force us rationally to act as if it were true. On the other hand, the scientific consensus seems to support the fact that the ice caps are shrinking, the sea levels are rising, and our planet is becoming increasingly warmer. Admittedly, ‘belief in science’ is also a ‘faith position’, but it is one on which both secularist and pagan orientations largely coincide.

Being concerned with the future well-being of our host planet is central to today’s resurgence of contemporary paganism. In religious terms, I will concede that Bron Taylor’s ‘dark green religion’ (DGR) trope perhaps best expresses the secular-pagan alliance. By-and-large, DGR is uncomfortable with – if not opposed to – theism per se – whether monotheistic, bitheistic or polytheistic. As a spiritual orientation, DGR might be more accurately understood as a form of monism – a ‘faith position’ that nevertheless prefers to have no truck with theos and/or theology and seeing these at best as ‘obstacles’ to the issue and work at hand. My argument here is that both art and ritual could likewise be considered as ‘obstacles’. I am not willing to go that far, and, personally, I also find the deity metaphors both beautiful and useful and, when they are grounded in the natural as they are for the most part in pagan conceptualizations, yet further allies in the quest to re-secure an ecological equilibrium.

An irony arises here in that both our words ecology and economy derive from the Greek word for a house, namely, oikos. While these have become global concerns that might rightfully disquiet everyone, they begin as local/immediate matters. Likewise, politics develops from the polis or city-state – one’s immediate community. In other words, the very real concerns of the individual and local collective have been transformed into world-stage affairs where, alas, they seem to have lost their organic roots and ability to be nourished from the ground up.

Dark green religion centers above all on physical multiplicity, what we otherwise call ‘life’, and the desire to see it flourish naturally/organically/holistically without artificial impediments or, worse, toxic industrial lethal poisons, etc. Beneath the pantheons of gods and goddesses that some of us choose to revere, there is yet the dark green core that remains our real birthright and legacy. But there is an additional irony here as well concerning ‘physical multiplicity’. This is also what the Christian holds as sacred in being ‘pro-life’ over ‘pro-choice’. In other words, Christians have adopted a ‘pagan’ position – a de facto pagan stance rather than a nominal one. But in this case, theirs is a fundamentalist paganism. We can find other forms of pagan fundamentalisms as well, from ethnic chauvinism to Luddite fixation, but at heart, and most comprehensively, paganism is DGR. This does not of course preclude that paganism covers the whole gamut of possibility – one that includes even the esoteric and transcendental, but the pagan’s valuing of the embryo has less to do with its being automatically or initially imbued with mind, spirit or viability. The embryo is instead simply a supreme instance of physical multiplicity. But from what I would term a ‘sane perspective’, physical multiplicity nonetheless requires limitation in the shape of form. Otherwise, it is a cancer. The same applies also to the human population explosion. Without some curbing to how much we rampantly reproduce, we humans are fast becoming nothing less than a malignant presence on planet Earth. Resources alone will continue to deplete as a cancer likewise consumes its host, conditions will degenerate, and the availability of viable space will itself disappear. Consequently, the vision of dark green synergetics that entertains and affirms the interconnectedness of all life is what lies at the base of contemporary paganism, and the physical and global necessities of our times I believe are what is behind today’s renaissance of the pagan orientation in both its multiple, diverse yet complimentary sectarian and subliminal generic forms.

So what does any of the above have to do with carnival? I think the answer lies in the role-playing and masking that so much of life itself entails. During carnival, however, the masks and façades are themselves openly celebrated – even reversed. Metaphorically, at least, this becomes a time to wear things inside out. The mask itself is worn to call attention to and to parody our more normal times, roles and conventions. As a time-between-time, a ‘non-time’ or epagomenae, it becomes a moment to pretend. And in this, we find the underlying role of theatre. The theatrical is the presentation of masks, façades and covers – however entertaining in themselves – in order often to penetrate and uncover the deeper and more authentic issues that are often hidden and not addressed.

So it was perhaps only fitting that Adelaïde arranged to have René Sette give his one-man show, Son des Pierres (‘Sound of the Stones’) at our house on Saturday the 19th. Richard and I moved the furniture in the living room and made the dining room into the audience section. We set up a full bar and had hors d’oeuvres for the ready. The performance was in English interspersed with Provençal songs. It was the story of Jean and his art of building ‘dry-stone’ walls. It was magical, captivating and beautiful and for me another coeur de l’Europe experience reminiscent of the salon concert that John and Jacqueline had arranged as a wedding gift for us in the Amsterdam house: an intimate, rich and lovely expression of Western culture and itself a moment-outside-of-time. All in all, we were seventeen for this occasion.

And with the end of our nine-day honouring of the ancestral dead, I have come to a further realization that our ‘divine parents’ are the gods themselves, but the gods as they manifest personally and intimately through the loved ones that have preceded us to the otherworld. Those that we have known who have died may be greater in number than those whom we knew personally and loved in one manner or another, but the di manes may be equally all those we have known and also those who were significant and important to us – these last in particular becoming one of the instances through which the divine reveals itself to us and is there for us. And with the Feralia, this last day of the Parentalia, our meadow has become prominently covered with glistening daisies, and the almond trees have gone into blossom. And we also have a daffodil.

And so, with the Regifugium as the first epagomenal day of the original carnival, we fled our beloved thebaïde and had another day in Aix-en-Provence – shopping, watching saved YouTube videos once I was able to connect my laptop to a cable connection, and seeing The King’s Speech of which I can only really say, ‘Splendid’. It took one back to an earlier heyday of British film-making. During the course of the day, I was able to get my email and website restored by my server and, so, was back in business. Day two was one of the most perfect weather-wise of what we have had so far this year. In the evening we went to Château Cresson for champagne with David and Marguerite and friends of theirs from Lorgues – an English couple, Mike and Shirley. For the rest of the epagomenae, we tended to celebrate by creatively working on our various projects, finishing some of them, and interspersing these efforts with walks across the meadow for equine darshan or the likes when and if ritually appropriate.

And then it was New Year’s, the Roman Matronalia. After walking the labyrinth for the first time since being here, we had large and delicious coffees at the Café de Cours while sitting in the luscious sun and watching the casual life of the town drift by. Though it clouded and rained later, it did not matter for our shamanic excursions again across the meadow; otherwise we were snug and warm inside with our wood-burning stove – capping the evening with negronis. My futurama vision, however, concerned seeing that there is no way the human species can stop what it is doing. Modify it perhaps at best, but we are just not globally organized enough to cease the degradation we are causing to our planet. I am now seeing the eventual recruiting of the ubiquitous unemployed youth of today into mercenary guards for the super-rich. What will happen to democracy when it comes to that? Or is democracy merely an ideal dream? My militant optimism wants to affirm that even if it is a dream, it is a dream that we could make into a reality. What is there that is so inalienably indelible that we cannot insist on changing? The greed of money is probably the answer, but positive change founded on an authentic and shared liberty remains always my wish and especially my New Year’s wish.

For the rest, it has been busier than I would otherwise have wished it to be. I have finished my Tools of the Sacred chapter though may need to cut it down to the word quota. I have continued working on the website and have made decent progress on the ISSR paper. Spring edges ever closer, and several mornings we have had huge flocks of birds blanketing the property chirping, singing and eating whatever they are finding. We had a lovely evening with Liliane and Renaud at the Calalou – Liliane being the daughter of Nicolas and Micheline and, like her parents, one of our most longtime friends here in Aups. But for the most part, it has been writing, dealing with bank matters and trying to arrange car insurance. With regard to this last, I have been to Draguignan with Petit Claude. The resolution there too inches forward. But it is the setting of where all this is occurring that is the true delight.

With the posting of this latest update, the Mardi Gras celebrations have concluded in Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans and elsewhere, but our own carnival continues until the Roman feriae of March 17th. My love for the radio station of France-Musique continues only to increase with its great range of jazz, classical and contemporary music. Much of the last is innovative and exciting. Almost all of the rest is joyous, perfectly lovely or both. And our noon hour brunches occur now more often outside than within the confines of this house that we adore.